Affliction
by larkfare
Summary: As the members battle their individual demons, will the Guild stick together, or fall to pieces? Ensemble piece, centred around Susie, and set after the series. Caroline/Susie. Rated T to be safe, but may go up. Dedicated to Aubry.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Jam & Jerusalem**_**.**

Ragged breaths broke through the bedroom's hazy stillness, and she stifled her sobs with a pillow as her own battle for air dragged her into uncertain consciousness. Heaving against the bed, she wondered, yet again, how it was that she didn't wake the entire village, but goodness knew how much time it had been now, she'd lost count, it was so hard to keep track of anything these days, and she remained alone in the knowledge of her affliction. Even her husband had not stirred once. She couldn't claim that it was altogether surprising, but it disappointed her, nonetheless, to know that she was wasting away, slowly but surely, until, eventually, she would be gone, forever; nothing but a soulless body and an empty heart, and no one even would have noticed.

As she blinked furiously, her eyes adjusted to a murky gloom, rather than total darkness; the bedside lamp was still on, she insisted on it these days, said it was her nerves, and try as she might to pull herself together, she simply couldn't seem to get a steady grip, and sanity escaped her, once again. She could still see it all, when she squeezed her eyes shut, tight, over the tears, she could still feel it. All those shattered dreams and twisted memories; those whispers of broken promises still rang in her ears. Golden hair tumbling from a wayward clasp. Tear-stained cheeks, a broken glass. The moonlit terrace softly swaying. The gardener's unwelcome touch, grasping, indelicate, which still made her shudder with revulsion, and yet which she had succumbed to, regardless, already irrational, already afflicted. White knuckles gripping iron railings, and the heady scent of lavender, and she pressed a hand to her brow, almost recoiling as it burned to the touch, and how many months had it been, now that she came to think of it, that she had been so afflicted? More than three, fewer than ten. She stuffed the same hand in her mouth, the free one clutching at the sheets. Far too long to make it conscionable, and part of her wondered if she hadn't been afflicted all along, if it hadn't only been her refusal to believe it that had kept it at bay until now.

Her tears had begun to subside, and still she kept her eyes closed, praying to sleep once more, to sleep forever, she didn't care, anything to escape the horrors of the waking world. She yearned to dream again of the hair, and the terrace, and the lavender, to immerse herself in what might have been. It was no good. What might have been was not, and was not to be. She was wide awake, and, sighing, she realised that there was nothing else for it. She swung her legs out from under the covers, not bothering to tiptoe, for if they had slept through all that, a hurricane couldn't have roused them, let alone her disaffected footsteps, and stole through the house, heading for the kitchen.

It wasn't as if the symptoms were unrecognisable, even to the untrained eye. Sleepless nights. Racing pulse. Headache, and heartache, and visions. Fever, and fervour, and being unable to think straight. It was what she was going to do about it that was the question, she mused, as she poured out the dregs of last night's Sauvignon, knowing all the while that she'd find no refuge at the bottom of it, not really. The time had come to kill or cure, she decided, knocking it back in one, to fight this affliction, or to die trying. Because that was what it was. Nothing more, nothing less. It was an affliction, no matter what other guise it might assume, be it that of sickness, or madness, or love.


	2. Symptoms

It was a shame, Sal couldn't help thinking, when now that she felt more alive than she had done since Mike had gone, that such a palpable atmosphere of doom had descended upon the village. Here was Tip, rushing in to sit beside her, approximately thirty seconds before the Guild meeting was due to start, lank hair hanging limply over her face, not quite masking the trauma of a marriage in turmoil, whose days could well be numbered, and "If Eileen tells me off today, I think I'll cry," she muttered, keeping her head down for what was probably the first time in her life.

Eileen, for her part, stood before them, her posture as stately as ever, if a little less upright, following the loss of her father, before he had ever had the chance to give her away to another man; to transfer her into someone else's care, so that now she was trapped in limbo, neither a daughter nor a wife, alone in this room full of subordinates. She cleared her throat, with a "Well, now. Are we all we're to be?"

As she did so, Kate Bales, who, for all her youth and girlishness, perhaps had a stronger acquaintance with death than any of them, seemed to fight the urge to roll her eyes. Poor Kate, who had been a widow before she had been a woman, and now whose secret only Sal knew. She had finally begun to come into her own, and her tortured expression would linger, Sal knew, the blood staining her memory long after it been scrubbed away.

Everyone looked around now, scanning the room, and Sal went to point out that Queenie wasn't there, stopping herself just in time, as she remembered that the verger had been taken ill, quite suddenly, last week, reminding them all, once more, of exactly how tenuous their grip on life was becoming. By way of contrast, Delilah was recovering, as well as could be expected, from her accident, and she sat, crumpled, in the corner, leaning heavily into her seat. She was still very much alive, albeit broken in body and in spirit, even if her mind was apt, like Tash's Spike, to go wandering.

"Susie isn't here yet!" Rosie yelled, before turning her attention back to her phone, which was permanently attached to her hand now that her son had been released. His time in prison didn't seem to have taught him the error of his ways, and he was driving his poor mother to distraction. As if she hadn't already got enough to deal with, now she was fraught with worry about him, dreading the day when he went further than he meant to; when he really, seriously hurt somebody, or worse. Tragedy crept up on most of them, hovering in the periphery, biding its time, lying in wait for the moment to strike. But there were also those, like Rosie's son, that chose to go out looking for it.

Sal's eyes went automatically to Caroline, but she didn't even seem to have registered her friend's absence, so distracted was she by a fascinating patch of floor, and the nurse couldn't help feeling sorry for her, in spite of herself. Poor Caroline, she had only just learnt what it meant to suffer, and Sal offered up yet another silent prayer for her son's safe return.

"Yes, well..." Eileen began, not quite saying what they were all thinking: that it was a truth, if not universally acknowledged, then at least whispered all over the village, that Susie had not been looking at all well recently. She was saved, however, from having to verbalise this, when the woman herself appeared, present and correct, if a shell of her former self, the entire Guild's sorrows reflected in the shadows under her eyes. Wordlessly, she took her seat next to Caroline, looking more haunted than the rest of them combined, as if she might have breathed her last a long time since.


End file.
